Lifestyle: Force of Love

Furthering the sentiment of my last post, New Year’s Awakening 2016, I am moving forward with intent. This intent, apparently, has become visible. A friend of mine at church on Sunday commented, “You look softer. I mean, not that you were ‘hard’, but you look different. Do you feel different?”

I had to admit I did. Something heavy, invisible yet visible, had lifted. I addressed my awakening and my goal for the new year. All I had revealed refreshed my friend as well and she said she had learned more in our fifteen-minute conversation than she had all morning. This is simply Proverbs 27:17 in action, iron sharpening iron.

As I moved amongst the crowd after the church service, there were so many people I desired to converse with. It had been many long weeks since I had had contact with any of them during my travels. The Christmas Holidays kept everyone else preoccupied as well.

I could feel myself being more generous with my time and my attention. When introduced to new people, I kept repeating their names in my head again and again so as not to forget them. This is quite a humble exercise for me, because I used to have such a good memory that once I knew someone’s name, I never forgot it.

Something else had changed in me, too.

So often I feel like people are too busy for God. People go to church to fill a social need, more than a spiritual one. Once out the door, they put God behind them until the next time they enter through it. This fact is troublesome and in the past made me grow quite disenchanted. This disenchantment has kept me from using and sharing my talents, thinking they really don’t matter and are of no use to others.

But Sunday, taking every thought captive, knowing that to be a Force of Love, I had to push myself to the next level, I did. A lovely woman in our fellowship met me at the door as I stood at the entrance to greet people. I hadn’t taken a lot of opportunity to speak in front of people on Sundays, but those times I did had made a mark on this woman who is struggling from OCD.

She is a lovely and real soul with deep and thoughtful questions. “Are you going to speak today?” she asked me as we greeted. Her eyes were sincere.

“No. Not today. Perhaps another day…”

“No. I mean, if you get a chance to share something, will you?”

“If so led,” I grinned.

Would I be?

Indeed.

The theme that day was moving mountains, having faith. This subject matter was nothing new, the information nothing groundbreaking. What was different was that this beautiful woman I had spoken with at the door boldly interjected when the speaker said, “Let your faith move mountains.”

Raising her hand she said aloud, “Can I ask a question?”

The speaker stopped. He was calm and encouraging. “Go ahead,” he said.

“How do I know if it is faith or positive thinking? Because I have had a lot of counseling and everyone says the same thing. If you keep thinking something good is going to happen, it eventually does.”

Several people stood up to coach her. I could tell not much of what they said was registering. One friend of ours began to hit the mark. He said, “If your mind is broken, you can’t ask your mind to fix your mind!”

Brilliant!

It is so true.

And that is what the masses were telling her. It was really just positive thinking on top of faith, stemming out of positive thinking. Many thoughts weaved through my mind. I felt compelled to stand and say something. Second thoughts came when the feeling of being in a self-help group began to establish themselves. I remained sitting.

Then that new sense of being a Force of Love captivated me.

I stood. I moved out into the aisle, finding myself at the front. All eyes were on me. Did I really have something important to say? Wouldn’t it be better to just share my thoughts with her in private? It was too late to consider it.

“Like A.W. Tozer said long ago in his book ‘In Pursuit of God’, ‘Faith never sees itself,’” I said. “We can move mountains and try to muster the faith to do it. But let us also remember the illustration of the refiner’s fire. God will not let that mountain move until the timing of it is perfect. In this life we move from challenge to challenge, all to prepare us for the life that follows. A master goldsmith will not take the metal out of the furnace, it is not ready, until he sees his reflection in it.”

Written by Jori Sams

Jori Sams is a Christian author and freelance writer with nearly 2000 published pieces on the Internet, with over 1500 being published by Yahoo. Her books are published through Writeious Books. When she isn’t writing, you can usually find her following the sun…